


You Were My New Dream

by snewvilliurs



Series: The NORA House Chronicles [5]
Category: Final Fantasy XIII
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-16
Updated: 2013-08-16
Packaged: 2017-12-23 17:47:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,459
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/929334
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/snewvilliurs/pseuds/snewvilliurs
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set post-XIII, established relationship.  A group of Purge survivors have decided to go after surviving ex-Sanctum military to take revenge, and it doesn't exclude the Cavalry.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You Were My New Dream

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by [this scene](http://youtu.be/UlK71GaF9v4) from _Lost_ \--because I can't not see Sawyer and Kate as Rygdea and Lebreau. It also started as an impromptu speed-writing challenge on Skype with [meguhime](http://meguhime.tumblr.com), with whom I had just finished the episode, and it was one of the most intense sessions in my life.

She takes a step back, closer to him, deliberately putting herself in front of him.  It’s more Snow’s kind of thing—“if you want him, you’re gonna have to go through me”—but her heart is pounding and her blood pumping so hard in her ears that she doesn’t hear herself say it, if she does.  It feels like her every muscle is taut like a bowstring, and it almost hurts, and her skin burns when she feels him reach out to touch her wrist.  He’s not backing away from those who have come to kill him; he’s pushing forward and trying to step away from behind her, and yet he’s not tugging, not trying to push her away. 

He wants to touch her one last time, even if it’s only this.  That much she can understand, even if she doesn’t hear anything if he speaks to her, and she can’t stand the thought of it.  She won’t have it.

Maybe, in that moment, she understands: how Snow has never had a shadow of a doubt before risking his life for Serah.  It doesn’t matter who she might leave behind.  It doesn’t matter what her life amounts to on her own.  All that matters, in this moment, those unbearable seconds, is that he can be safe, no matter what.  It doesn’t matter whose life he thinks has more worth—hers, of course hers, because she’s just as good as a mother to those kids and he’s got so little left than things to repent for.

She wants him— _needs_ him alive.  That is all she knows. 

The men pointing guns at them have their faces hidden (cowards, she thinks spitefully somewhere at the back of her mind, only cowards do this), but she recognizes the leader’s voice when he speaks up—to her.  Because he’s from Bodhum.  He’s one of her own, and it makes her chest feel tight with anger and dread and everything in between.  She’s saved his life in the Hanging Edge, three years ago, and now she has to stand between him and Rygdea’s life.

“You’re defending him,” he snarls, and she would be beaten down by the hate in his tone if it weren’t for the fact that she realizes it’s fully mutual.  “He’s one of them, and you act like he deserves to be alive after everything he and his kind have done—”

 _“Captain Rygdea_ ,” another one of the men said.  “ _You have been tried by the survivors of the Purge and found guilty of mass murder.  We hereby sentence you to death.”_  

The words ring in her head, even though they’ve had the time to cool down between then and now, and they burn—after all they’ve suffered, everything they’ve lost, she can’t imagine how killing as they’ve seen their loved ones killed will make things right.  Those who had to die have died and paid with their lives.  But to go after what is left of the Sanctum—to go after him, and Etro knows how many others—simply because it was once the Sanctum...

She grits her teeth so hard her jaws hurt.  Her fists clench, and she’s so hot she can’t even feel his touch anymore, can’t feel anything but anger and resentment burning white-hot within her.  “That isn’t yours to decide.  He hasn’t done anything.  And even if he had—then you’ll have to kill one of your own first.  And what you’ll have on your conscience is that someone else from Bodhum is dead and it’ll be because of you.  Not the Sanctum, not the Purge, not the Primarch— _you_.”

The hoods mask their eyes in shadows but still she stands her ground, sets her shoulders and stares into where she knows they are, and there’s both challenge and reproach in her eyes—and hate.  One of the men, the one who spoke as the disgustingly self-righteous judge of a court that doesn’t and shouldn’t exist, steps forward from behind the leader and presses the barrel of his gun to the hollow between her collarbones.  Her pulse beats hard against the cold metal, and she doesn’t flinch, doesn’t blink for the first time when staring death in the face, and then—

Everything shifts and tumbles when Rygdea’s fingers close around her wrist and tug, and his other hand pushes her shoulder so that she falls to the side and he puts himself in front of the guns instead of her.  She scrapes her palms on the ground, and before she can pull herself up, someone grabs her by the arm and puts a gun to her throat while Rygdea grabs the gun from the judge and holds him with his arm behind his back.  And, for a moment, everything stops when he sees her.

“Lebreau!”

“Let him go, _Captain_ ,” the leader says, hissing his rank where she’s always used it as a term of endearment, and it makes her feel sick.  “Or he blows her head off, and that’ll be on you.”

Rygdea’s eyes move to her, and she can’t look at him, can’t face him now that she’s failed him; when she bows her head, the one holding her pulls on her hair and forces her.  The whole of her back stiffens when her eyes meet his, and she sees what he’s thinking and what he’s about to do, so she shakes her head and swallows hard to try and find her voice.

“Don’t do it,” she says, orders him—he’s never touched her roughly, and she’s never demanded anything from him, not until now.  “Don’t let them win.”

“You think this is a game, sweetheart?” the man speaks into her ear, pressing the barrel harder into her neck.  It digs painfully into her skin.

Rygdea nearly _barks_.  “Hey!  You hurt her and I swear I’ll—”

“Calm down, Captain,” the leader says.  The man holding her cocks his gun.  “And I’d suggest letting go now.”

She shakes her head at him again, this time with more urgency, but still he grits his teeth and lets go.  Her throat hurts, but she doesn’t hear herself screaming no; her blood is too loud in her ears again.  Something in his eyes says he’s sorry when he looks at her again, but to her it feels even worse than when she watched Cocoon fall out of the sky because _this_ is her world crashing down at her feet, and she tries to struggle when the leader kicks Rygdea to his knees and socks him hard in the jaw.  And then again.

“Stop it!” she yells, and she knows he’s going to be beaten half to death and shot if she doesn’t do something, anything to stop it.  But there’s nothing she can do, not a single thing Snow’s taught her that she can try without surely getting him killed, or dying before she can save him.  Him, though—she sees at least a handful openings that could give him an edge again regardless of her.  The gun is still pressed against her neck and for the first time in too long, her eyes well up with anger and hopelessness.  “Rygdea, _please_.”

The leader’s knuckles are red and bright with his blood when he stops, first addressing the man holding her as he grabs a gun, and then looks at her.  “Keep her still.  I want you to watch like I watched my wife die.  Like they watched their sons and daughters and families.  Because of him and all of them.”

“Close your eyes, darlin’,” Rygdea says, too sweet, too gentle, too resolute.  It’s as close as he can come to telling her he loves her one last time without letting them hear.

“ _No_! Fight!”

And he repeats, through gritted teeth: “Close your eyes!”

 _“I wanna tell you a secret_ ,” he said once.  “ _You wanna know why I joined the military?  I just wanted to fly an airship.  Been my dream since I was a kid.  So, with everything that happened right under my nose, and that I had to do...I’m happy I did it.  Cause I got to live my dream, even if that left me without one after that.”_

But she doesn’t close her eyes—refuses to accept it to that point.  Still, tears spill from them as she holds his gaze, stares at his blue, blue, blue eyes.  He looks away first, closing them.  Seconds tick by; it looks like all of them are enjoying this, if only because he’s suffering as much as they have.  The fight in her is withering away and she slumps against the man holding her, barely feeling the press of the gun against her neck anymore as she quietly sobs his name.

Her eyes close when she hears the gunshot.

**Author's Note:**

> Due to my satisfaction with the style of the above ending, I consider it the "true" ending; however, I made myself so depressed with it that I had to write the second possibility and its much happier outcome. Starts right after the last paragraph.
>
>> He opens his eyes and looks at her at the sound of it, looking almost surprised that he isn’t dead yet. Seeing her the way she is makes him frown, and he looks around the small group of men as best as he can in his position, then at her, and something changes in his eyes—she sees it as it does. The leader grows impatient, his finger itching to pull the trigger, but something has held him back so far, otherwise Rygdea wouldn’t be alive.
>> 
>> “Any last words?” he finally asks, jamming the barrel of his gun against Rygdea’s skull.
>> 
>> “Liven up, darlin’, it’s gonna be okay,” he answers. A smile tugs at his lips.
>> 
>> He’s a soldier. She’s been trained by Snow—unpolished, but still alive after everything that’s happened. Simultaneously, Rygdea grabs and twists the wrist of the leader to grab his gun, and Lebreau drives her elbow into the one holding her, using his weight to throw him into the others. They topple over like bowling pins, and it turns out only one other has a gun on him; when he shoots Rygdea, the only thing he can do is use the leader as a shield. Lebreau knocks out as many of them as she can with the butt of her gun, dropping it like it’s burning her skin once they’re all neutralized.
>> 
>> Quicker than everything else that just happened, she finds herself pulled into Rygdea’s arms, clutching the back of his shirt as she buries her face in the crook of his neck. His hand is heavy on the back of his neck and he kisses the top of her head, clutching to her more than she clutches him.
>> 
>> “Are you okay?”
>> 
>> She nods against him and tries not to think of the leader dead a few feet away from them, because it’s too good to be in his arms to wonder if someone who wanted to kill him in cold blood should still be alive. Before she can think, though, he pulls back and tilts her chin up to kiss her.
>> 
>> “I love you,” he says softly. “Thank you.”


End file.
